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The new Don’t Waste Your Life blog will launch on the 17th!
Looking back on our childhood, we can all laugh at a time when we thought that life was over because we had missed out on a new toy or a visit to Chuck E. Cheese. If we only knew then what we know now, eh? What many people don’t realize is that this is a fairly accurate picture of heaven. Where, in the presence of our Lord and Savior, we will look back on our lives and laugh at what we thought was so important.
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.
1st Corinthians 13:11
Generally when people say they want to live a “full life,” they have a bucket list of to do’s. World traveling, love, kids, career, just to name a few. These things are great, but like a child crying over a toy, they leave us far too easily pleased.
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
We have a choice - live for creation or Creator. We serve a God who formed us in our mothers womb, who knows each hair on our heads and is sovereign over all the universe. Throw out your bucket list and see what sort of adventures your Heavenly Father has for you!
“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree along time a ago.” —
- Warren Buffet
We tend to think of the immediate payoff when deciding what to do next. What will have an immediate effect? What will bring me immediate pleasure, immediate reward, immediate satisfaction, immediate recognition, immediate results?
Nothing big would ever be accomplished if we all thought this way. Take the long view.
(posted by Matt Heerema)
In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. - 1st Peter 1:6-7
Take all your pain and hurt and anger and sorrow and turn it to God as praise. Praise for his incredible mercy and his unfailing love. Don’t waste your life focussed on your trials, because some day soon he will wipe every tear from your eye.
“Don’t waste your life trying to look good. Spend your life making God look good. That’s why you were made. And you know the weakest among you, the most ugly, have perhaps, the greatest chance to do that. The rest of you are too good lookin’.
You distract people. But if you’ve got a little hunch in your back, a little pot in your belly and hair’s not doing what you wish it could, you just might be a candidate to get attention for somebody else.”
— John Piper, “Discern What Pleases God: Himself”, New Attitude Conference 2007
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“Gracious affections are attended with evangelical humiliation. Evangelical humiliation is a sense that a Christian has of his own utter insufficiency, despicableness, and odiousnesss, with an answerable frame of heart.” —
Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise on Religious Affections
(posted by: matt heerema)
Found on the Sovereign Grace Ministries blog:
At the Next 2010 Conference, Kevin DeYoung gave a list of suggestions for “How to be a difference maker in a local church.” A few of them were:
View the full list on the Sovereign Grace Blog and listen to the message “The Church” on ThisNext.org
(posted by: matt heerema)